Overhead cranes are well known and are used frequently to lift and carry objects from one portion of a work bay to another. The crane commonly employs a single hoist that provides a lifting hook or other fixture used to carry the object. At least one and in some cases a plurality of vertically extending wire ropes support the lifting fixture where sheaves provided on the lifting fixture and proximate the hoist can be used to increase lifting capacity of the crane.
Although such cranes are well suited for lifting and carrying objects, such cranes do not allow accurate positioning of the object without help from additional devices or human operators since the wire rope(s) extend vertically. Performing work on the object when supported by the crane is typically not practical because the vertically extending wire rope(s) provide little if any ability to resist lateral loads and/or overturning moments such as a moment about the vertically extending wire rope(s), or about other axes orthogonal to the wire rope(s) depending upon the point of attachment to the object.